This is the second in a series of articles on creating a strategic marketing plan for your business. Part I, “What Exactly IS a Strategic Marketing Plan Anyway?,” looks at what a plan actually is and how it works.

So your business already has a marketing plan. Are you sure? A plan is NOT that wildly creative brand idea. (You know, the one you paid a lot of money for someone to come up with.) It’s NOT the same thing your competitors are doing. (And it’s not the opposite, either.) It’s NOT what you end up with if you just keep talking about it. (Although input from the whole team is a key part of the process.)

One of the biggest obstacles to creating a marketing plan, especially for small businesses, lies in not having a good understanding of what it is in the first place.

Common Misconceptions

Some of the most common misconceptions we hear can be boiled down to these:

1. “You’re the expert, so you tell me what we need to do. (And, by the way, I don’t expect to pay for it).”
2. “Nah, we already have a plan: There’s our ad list for the year.”
3. “We already found a marketing plan for our type of business and filled it out [last year] [when we started the business] [a while back, I don’t remember when].”
4. “We can’t be tied down by a marketing plan. [In our industry] [As a startup] [As a rapidly growing company] things are changing too fast for us to be constrained by a plan.”

Do any of those sound familiar? The one thing they all have in common is that they show what a marketing plan is not.

Let’s take them one at a time.

1. A Pitch Is Not a Plan

This one came as a shock. For years I had seen business owners not wanting to commit to a plan because it takes too long, because it costs too much, or because it’s just plain not a lot of fun, but it had never occurred to me that anyone would consider a pitch for business an actual plan.

A few years ago we received a Request for Proposal from a well-respected nonprofit, one with some solid history and success under its belt. They needed a marketing plan, which was right up our alley, but, oddly enough, their budget was way too high. That never happens. People always underestimate the cost of a good marketing plan, not the other way around. And this wasn’t a detailed brief, it was a very general RFP for developing a marketing plan. Something was off. I made an appointment to find out more.

Soon I found myself sitting in the executive director’s office, having a wonderful chat about the history of the organization and her vision for the future. I brought us back to the RFP.

“What’s your marketing budget for the year?” I asked. Fifty thousand. Hmmm. That’s what the RFP gave as the too-high budget just for developing a plan. “I mean your overall marketing budget?” Fifty thousand. “For everything?” Yes. Well, that was awfully small for everything. “If that’s your total budget,” I said, “you’ll probably need all that for implementation. So how much can you allocate for developing the plan? Will you pull that from a different budget?” Oh, no, she said, it’s fifty thousand for the whole plan.

Then it hit me. The $50,000 was indeed a too-low budget for all of their marketing and advertising for the year, and, what was worse, none of it included a marketing plan, because she didn’t expect to pay for a plan at all. She thought she was getting it for free in the form of a proposal. I felt like banging my head on the large desk between us.

“A proposal is just a proposal,” I tried to explain. “It’s a pitch, not a plan.”

But she didn’t understand. Of all the agencies and consultants out there, she thought, surely someone would hit the bull’s eye—even if all of them were taking aim blindfolded. Someone, surely, was bound to hit upon the just-right mix of marketing strategies and tactics for her organization—despite the fact that none of us yet had any idea what goals and strategies the organization actually needed at this point in time.

“A proposal is an outline of how we would approach working with you,” I continued, “but it’s not the actual work itself.” I explained that developing a good marketing plan for an organization this size would probably take at least 25 hours of an experienced strategist’s time, maybe more. “You can’t hire an agency to implement a plan that doesn’t exist,” I tried. “First, you have to create the plan.”

But she didn’t understand. She had probably never seen an actual marketing plan. It was clear she had never been part of the process of developing one. She was at the mercy of whatever flashy proposal hit her desk with the biggest thud.

I thanked her for her time, we chatted a bit more, and I left, telling her later in a short note that we wouldn’t be bidding on the project at this time.

2. A Media Plan Is Not a Strategy

Many marketers, especially marketing managers and directors at larger companies, are well-versed in hammering out an annual media plan. Number crunching starts early in the fourth quarter, when you pull out all the data you’ve been able to collect and try to figure out which advertising was the most effective.

A media plan is important, but it’s only a part of the overall plan. And while the amount of a marketing budget allocated to paid advertising can be a sizable chunk of the whole, especially for older, established companies, it’s still just a part.

A marketing plan includes an outline of strategies, tactics, and budget for all of your company’s marketing activities, not just paid advertising. What about your website? Does it need an update, or even an overhaul? Have you factored in costs for maintenance and updates? What about SEO? Local search? Will you use direct mail? Email marketing? What about print collateral? Signage? Promotions? In-store marketing? Special events? And where does your online advertising—PPC and social—fit in? Have you budgeted for that?

Many small to mid-size businesses handle day-to-day marketing activities in-house, but there are inevitably some outside expenses beyond what staff can handle on their own. Printing. Software. Mail services, postage. Packaging design and production. And there’s usually some level of professional assistance needed, either in the form of regular agency support or occasional help with special projects. Web and app development. PR assistance. Professional photography and videography. PPC expertise. Social media management. Creative services. Ongoing or special-project consulting.

All of that needs to be considered when developing your marketing plan. If you’re just looking at advertising, you’re missing a big part of the big picture–and hampering your ability to budget effectively.

3. A Generic Plan Is An Oxymoron

A “generic plan”—just like “cruel kindness” or “hugely small”—is an oxymoron, a meaningless contradiction of terms.

A sample of a good marketing plan can be very helpful, especially if it’s for a similar business of similar size and scope, but there’s no such thing as a marketing plan template you can fill in and be done with once and for all.

The only thing we find is really standard is the process every business needs to go through for creating a plan, a process that applies to businesses of any size, in any industry, start-up and established company alike. Of course, for bigger companies, the process will be more detailed, multi-leveled, and complex, than what small businesses have to contend with, although the drill-down process for developing a strategic plan is basically the same. However, the actual plans that evolve from that process will always be completely different for every business or organization.

There is no “marketing plan for X type of business” you can buy, borrow, or steal that will be right for your business. Not now. Not ever. If there were, it would be for an exact clone of your business at this exact point in time, which is about as likely as finding an exact double of yourself.

Same goes with determining the size of your marketing budget: There’s no single one right way someone else can tell you what that should be. Should you spend 2%? or 5%? or 10% Surely there’s a standard somewhere you should follow, whether you can afford it or not. Right? Wrong. Within reason, you can develop an effective marketing plan for just about any size budget. But, however small or large, it will be unique.

4. An Excuse Is Just An Excuse

If you’ve ever entertained the thought that your business is exempt from planning because you’re too something—too new, maybe, or too established, too successful, too different, too special in any way—you’re simply deceiving yourself. And hurting your business. It’s like going to your grade school teacher and saying you didn’t do your homework because you’re too smart. It’s just an excuse, and a poor one at that. (“The dog ate my homework” is actually more creative.)

“We’re changing too fast to be tied down by a plan” is typical of startups and small entrepreneurial enterprises. “Our marketing department has it covered” is typical of larger, more established companies. Both are nothing more than an excuse.

Successful businesses understand that good strategy is the foundation for success. And successful entrepreneurs and business leaders understand that good strategy grows and evolves. It changes over time, in response to the measurement tools you built into the plan in the beginning. That means your business is never too anything to be exempt from a well-crafted plan.

You might get by without it—a lot of businesses do—but you’ll certainly get by lots better with it in hand.

Next Step: How To Create a Strategic Marketing Plan

So how do you actually do it? The next post in this series will take it apart, with step-by-step instructions and examples. But be prepared: This is not a cookie-cutter template or a fill-in-the-blank form. A good marketing plan is strategic—which means, built around your company’s goals and objectives. A good plan is integrated—with all of your marketing, advertising, and communications activities working together around shared goals. And a good plan measurable—defined specifically and clearly enough that you can measure and assess results.

All of that takes work. But it can be done. And we’ll show you how.